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Saturday, July 13, 2013

This is big. Ruth Bourdain, the bawdy, brainy Twitter mashup
persona of Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl unveiled him/herself to The
New York Times this morning in front page news. Since March of 2010, Ruth Bourdain has been tweeting hilarious,
pointed musings on the culinary affectations of modern day foodie greats.

The
real identity of this James
Beard award winning culinary star has been the subject of breathless speculation
(at times). S/he turns out to be, Josh
Friedland, a calm, somewhat serious foodie at the helm of Food Section, a website that features
Josh’s original reporting and food stories that he gathers from all over the
universe. The amazing thing is that there is not a hint of snark, irony or
satire on his site. There IS however a huge amount of information, news and
culinary intelligence that would work perfectly as the basis for Ruth Bourdain’s
mocking messaging on Twitter. And let’s not forget that Josh lives in Joisey!

The real world tweets of Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain seem
like a parody in themselves, so it was a brilliant idea to combine them. As of
this writing, here is Reichl’s latest tweet:

I was fairly certain Ruth Bourdain was Alice Waters, who actually admitted
to it in 2011. Okay, it WAS on April Fool’s Day, but I loved the idea that the
super serious and painfully earnest chef could mock herself with such abandon. It
IS cool to know RB’s real identity, but I wonder if her/his tweets will
lose a bit of their edge, knowing that they come from such a seemingly calm and
dispassionate observer of the culinary scene.